


The Tale of Suki

by Lynx357



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Coming of Age, Found Family, Friendship, Missing scenes from the show, Multi, OC Character Death, SO, Suki backstory, The consequences of war, Underage Drinking, and my brain decided to fix that, childhood crushes, here you go, teenagers coping with adult responsibilities, there is a tragic lack of Suki fics in this fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26112706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lynx357/pseuds/Lynx357
Summary: The baby arrives too early. She comes into the world tiny and fragile and shrieking with fury, and the healer holds her carefully even as she thrashes her too-small fists and warns her mother that she might not make it. But Sying takes the bundle of squalling infant from her and looks down into the bright red face all screwed up in indignation and says,“I think that she’ll be fine,” and the child latches onto her with a fierce grip and Sying decides to name her Suki.
Relationships: Aang/Katara, Mai/Ty Lee, Suki & The Gaang (Avatar), Suki & the Kyoshi Warriors, Suki/Sokka, hints of Suki/Sokka/Zuko, hints of Zuko/Mai
Comments: 23
Kudos: 81





	The Tale of Suki

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: allusion to sexual assault, brief descriptions of violence, underage drinking.

The baby arrives too early. She comes into the world tiny and fragile and shrieking with fury, and the healer holds her carefully even as she thrashes her too-small fists and warns her mother that she might not make it. But Sying takes the bundle of squalling infant from her and looks down into a bright red face all screwed up in indignation and says, 

“I think that she’ll be fine,” and the child latches onto her fingers with a fierce grip and Sying decides to name her Suki.

Sying is a good mother, calm and affectionate, and Suki adores her. She’s a Kyoshi Warrior, but she prefers gardening to fighting, and many of Suki’s early memories contain the mellow scent of exposed earth and the warmth of the sun on her face as Sying names every plant in their little garden, pointing them out for Suki to see.   
As Suki grows, her mother teaches her as much as she can. Suki learns to read and write and sew and cook, but not to fight, no matter how much she begs.  
“Not yet,” Sying tells her, “you’re too young.”  
But Suki sneaks out of the nursery to watch her train with the other women, and steals her makeup to try and imitate the war paint that she wears, and doesn’t understand, not yet, why Sying always looks so sad when she catches her playing at war.

When Suki is seven and still tiny, the village elders come to her house and take her hands and lead her down to the healing house where her mother lies on a bed, lips blue and skin white and uniform red red red in a way no Earth Kingdom uniform ever should be.

“It was pirates,” she hears them murmur, but she ignores them because her mother, who was so strong and bright and vibrant is lying dead in front of her and she doesn’t care how it happened, she just needs it to not be true. 

Sying’s fans lie abandoned at her side, and Suki stretches out her hands and picks them up with her little child fingers and grips them until her knuckles turn white. She doesn’t cry in front of the adults, even though she thinks that maybe she should. The tears don’t come until she’s alone in the spare room of her new guardians house with its strange bed and funny smell, and it hits her properly for the first time that she will never truly be home again.

With her mother gone, there is nothing stopping Suki from beginning her training as a Kyoshi Warrior. It’s a pyrrhic victory.

The year Suki turns thirteen she completes her training and dons the uniform of Kyoshi for the first time (younger than her mother had been when she first went to battle, but war makes soldiers out of children and corpses out of mothers and Kyoshi needs defenders and there is no one else, no one else) and the older girls look at her solemnly and say, 

“You’re one of us now.” She’s proud of herself, of her achievement, but when she looks in the mirror for the first time all she can see is her mother, dressed for a fight that she won’t ever come back from.

Yenay is twenty-two and the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors, tall and striking, and she shows Suki how to apply her makeup without it smudging and teaches her all the best tricks to win a fight and smiles down at her and calls her “little sister.” Suki’s face glows red under her praise and her heart swells too big for her chest when Yenay smiles and she thinks, _this what love is,_ though she’ll never, ever admit it to anyone. 

The first time Yenay takes her out into the field for real, the first time a large man with a sword sneers down at her and then gasps up at her, face shocked and lips sticky with blood, Suki holds it together until they get back to the village and then she throws her still-dripping fans away from herself and breaks down sobbing and Yenay comes to her and holds her, rocks her like a baby and tells her,

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” like her heart is breaking until Suki’s tears run dry.

Fifteen, some say, is too young for leadership (but war makes generals out of children and corpses out of teachers and someone needs to step up and there is no one else, no one else), but everyone agrees that Suki is good at it. She learns to balance friendship and authority, to push where needed and to give where not, to stand straight under scrutiny and never, ever back down. Her girls trust her with their lives and the rest of the village does too and she shoulders their expectations proudly because she knows her duty. 

(Sometimes she feels like she will collapse under the weight of it, feels like curling up in a ball and screaming to the Earth, to the Elders, to the spirit of Yenay, “I’m not ready for this, I don’t know what I’m doing, why did you leave me alone, please,  _I don’t know what I’m doing.”)_

And then avatar arrives, alive and powerful and a _child_ , and Suki is filled with hope and despair in equal measure, right up until that stupid water tribe boy sticks his nose into her training session and annoys her so much that she forgets about everything else, just for a bit. 

Sokka is juvenile and obnoxious and she hates him, but he’s easy to rile up and amusing to mess with, so she does until he leaves in a huff, offended that ‘a bunch of girls’ could best him so easily.

And then of course he comes back, but this time he’s humble and serious and actually sort of sweet in a way that twists her stomach into weird knots that she hasn’t had to deal with since she got over her childhood crush on Yenay, and makes her want to punch him. As a compromise she sticks him in a dress because she knows that it will embarrass him even though it shouldn’t and beats him up under the guise of training, but then it turns out that he looks very good in green and he’s clever enough to work out a way to beat her even without any experience, and boys are incredibly stupid but she might just be beginning to see what all the fuss is about.

The look on his face when she kisses his cheek is one she’ll treasure forever.

Sixteen seems like a good age to be traveling the world. Kyoshi stayed out of the war, and the war came to them anyway and Suki is tired of sitting back and letting other people take the fall and when she talks to her girls, they all agree. So she packs up her things and sets sail with her family at her side and resolutely doesn’t think about the fact that they might never see their island again.

In another life, Suki thinks sometimes, this would be fun and exciting. She would wander the streets of strange cities unafraid, she would wear nice dresses and buy pretty things and laugh with girls who have never spilled anyone’s blood. Instead, she has ambushes to organise and drills to run through and blood to clean from her blades and her skirts on the days that they get lucky (unlucky). 

It is exciting, sometimes. But mostly it’s hard work and sleeping rough and waking up every few hours because she isn’t the only one to have nightmares and she will never ignore her sisters when they are in pain.

The Kyoshi warriors need money, so Suki gets a job, ferrying refugees, and it’s long hours dealing with rude people until one day she hears a familiar voice and then has a reunion with old friends and an introduction to a new one. Toph is loud and crass and kind of cute in a feral sort of way, and Suki likes her immediately.

The gaang are heading into danger once more, so Suki suits up and leaves her second, Lian, in charge, and goes with them through the Serpents Pass.Protecting the Gaang is made a lot harder with Sokka leaping between her and every possible threat like she’s some delicate flower just waiting to be crushed. She’s reaching the end of her rope when she confronts him about it, because she thought they were past that sort of condescending nonsense, but then he tells her that he lost someone, someone important that he was meant to protect, and Suki forgives him because she understands the many ways that grief can change a person. (She wrestles down the jealousy that rears it’s ugly head at the longing in his voice because she refuses to be that sort of woman.)

Sokka is still sweet and still funny, but he’s sadder now, eyes shadowed with loss and pain and and Suki hates the Fire Nation just a little bit more for stealing his innocence away from him. 

All too soon, she has to say good bye. At least thistime, she gets a proper kiss. Her second kiss of the trip, technically, but poor Toph clams up and stomps off when Suki tries to tease her about it, so she decides to leave that one alone

The Gaang are kind and she wants to stay with them, but she’s a Kyoshi Warrior and her girls still need her, so she packs up her things and walks away and prays to every spirit she knows that she will see them all again. She will miss them, but right now she misses her sisters-in-arms too, and Lian, who despises command, will be glad to have her back. 

Sixteen also seems like a bad age to end up in prison. The fire nation princess stays just long enough to gloat, to singe Suki’s skin along her arms and hands until it’s red and painful, to taunt her with her failures, and then she’s gone, and so are Suki’s girls. Guilt is a living thing, Suki learns, sharp-toothed and starving, eating holes in her stomach, in her sleep, in her psyche. Her nightmares now wear all of their faces as they lie next to her mother, pale-faced and still and dressed in red red red. 

Time passes, slowly and quickly, in fits and starts, an endless tableau of boredom-fear-boredom. A guard leers at her, hand creeping where she doesn’t want it, and she breaks his nose. The other guards whip her for it, but he leaves her alone afterwards so she counts it as a victory. They transfer her to a cage, then to a war balloon, then to a gondola. A sneering man waits for her at the other end. 

“Welcome to the Boiling Rock.” He says. “I expect you’ll be here a while.” 

News arrives slowly, and spreads even slower, but Suki keeps her ears open, desperate for any information about the outside world, only to wish she could have stayed ignorant when she learns that the avatar is dead. That night, she curls up on her bed and cries silently, mourning a young boy with a bright smile and a cheerful laugh, mourning the loss of a people, mourning the only hope for her island. Mourning for her friend.

Suki keeps her head down and works hard and doesn’t talk to anyone. She runs through drills in her cell, over and over until her muscles shake with fatigue and she can collapse onto her bed and sleep without dreaming. She wonders about her girls, about what remains of the gaang, about Kyoshi. She wonders if any of them are still alive. 

The sun goes dark. Aang turns out to be alive. Suki cries again, this time with joy. 

Life goes on. The prison is too hot and the work is endless and tiresome. Suki keeps going, doggedly determined. This will not be what breaks her.

Another guard enters her cell and tries to kiss her. She punches him into the wall and his helmet falls off, revealing the most idiotic genius that Suki has ever wanted to kiss. 

Zuko is an unexpected surprise, and not a good one. She doesn’t trust him, but he came here with Sokka and hasn’t ratted them out and he clumsily apologises for almost burning down her village, so she decides that she can work with him, for now. 

And then they are all standing on a muggy beach, looking out towards freedom while Sokka bows his head and admits that he’s afraid of failure and Suki wants to comfort him but the words won’t come, because she knows the sting of guilt and loss and Sokka deserves better than empty platitudes. But then Zuko steps forward and tells Sokka that trying is more important than failing in a voice heavy with experience, and Sokka steels his jaw and decides to stay for his father and Suki thinks, _alright, your highness, maybe you aren’t so bad after all._

Planning their second escape has Suki feeling more and more useless - she’s a fantastic tactician but she can’t match the insane brand of genius that seems to be intrinsic to Water Tribe men - until they’re standing in the prison yard looking up at the warden and Sokka admits that he didn’t think this part through. Suki grins to herself, barely even registering the argument going on behind her, and thinks  _alright, my turn_.  It takes her maybe thirty seconds, all told. She must be getting sloppy. 

The fight on the gondola is fraught with fear and adrenaline. Sokka catches Zuko when he leaps in an insane display of trust, and then it’s the three of them fighting side by side against Azula and Ty lee, and Suki sees red as they exchange blows, because these are the people who took her girls from her and she will not let anyone else be taken. 

They win, for a given value of winning. On the war balloon, Sokka kisses her and vanishes with his dad and Chit Sang, leaving Suki and Zuko alone together. He’s quiet, now, subdued, and Suki sits next to him and asks if he’s alright, because he saved all of them today and she thinks that maybe being friends with him wouldn’t be too bad. 

“It’s Mai.” He tells her. “Azula might have killed her already. She saved us, and we left her there, and now she might be dead because of it.” He bows his head over his hands and curls them into fists to try and stop them from shaking.

“We couldn’t go back for her. She knew that.” Suki tells him, as gently as she can. Mai is a warrior, first and foremost, so Suki knows that what she’s saying is true. “She doesn’t seem the type to make a decision without thinking it through. She knew what she was doing. All we can do is be grateful, and hope for the best.” Zuko nods, but his mouth still pulls downwards unhappily, so Suki stays with him in silent support, even as her eyes droop with exhaustion. 

A some point during the journey, Sokka comes back and takes the seat on her other side, so she rests her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes when he puts his arm around her. She falls asleep like that, with a boy on either side of her, safer than she’s felt in months.

The air temple is stunning and Katara weeps when she sees her father and she and Sokka and Hakoda spend the whole evening glued to each other’s sides, so Suki goes to say hello to Aang and Toph and the others who all eagerly introduce themselves, and then she melts back into a dark corner because she’s been alone save for enemies for weeks on end and the presence of so many people so close to her is making her twitchy. 

Almost inevitably she runs into Zuko who clearly has had the same idea and they both eye each other for a moment and then settle in, just within arms reach of each other and watch the reunion celebrations in comfortable silence. 

Night falls and one by one the younger members of the group succumb to sleep. Suki waits for Sokka to clamber into his bedroll before she sets up her own next to him, stealing one of his hands to hold throughout the night, because she isn’t alone any more and she doesn’t want to forget that. 

Adjusting to such a rapid change in routine is a struggle, but Suki refuses to let it show. She throws her self into work, hunting with Sokka, cooking with Katara, training with whoever is free for a sparring match, and catching up on everything that she missed while she was in prison. By the time evening rolls around she’s too exhausted to even think, let alone have nightmares. 

On day two at the Air Temple she watches Zuko train with Aang and then afterwards seeks him out and requests that he show her how to fight with dual dao blades and they are both angry at the world and riddled with guilt and they hack at each other for almost an hour before they finally tire themselves out. It’s incredibly cathartic. At the end of their match they bow to each other and Zuko looks her in the eye with an almost sad kind of knowing that she knows is reflected on her own face and they make their way to dinner that night with their arms brushing as they walk.

That night Sokka takes her hand and leads her down to the lowest balcony in their spire to show her the view. He tells her silly stories about his travels and holds her hand like he never wants to let go and she loses herself in the warmth of his skin and the sound of his voice and the softness of his mouth. He’s careful with her, excited and nervous and when she tells him where she wants him to put his hands he giggles, high pitched and shaky and she laughs too because she’s happy.

Later, curled up in his arms as he snores quietly, dread creeps into her bones and fear twists knots in her stomach, because she thinks that maybe she loves him, and every other thing that she loves she has lost.

The Fire Nation attacks, because that’s what the Fire Nation does. Half her friends are left behind to fend for themselves and Suki thinks  _not again_ ,  and Zuko attacks his sister and almost dies and Suki wants to scream at him because anger is not something anyone should die for and he doesn’t get to throw himself away like that, not when they need him. 

But then Katara is shouting instead and she is far more vicious than Suki has ever heard her and then she and Zuko are leaving on some insane revenge quest and Sokka is left staring after them with tears on his cheeks because Katara’s anger hadn’t had a target to aim at and Sokka was never prepared to defend himself from his own sister. 

“How could she say that?” He chokes into Suki’s shoulder later. He is shaking apart in her arms, clinging on to her too tightly but she doesn’t let go. “How could she say that I didn’t love Mom?” And Suki stays silent because she doesn’t have the words, has never been the best at comfort, will not allow herself to lie. 

“How could she say that?” Whispers Sokka, and over his shoulder she sees Toph and Aang watching them, helplessly.

Silence suffocates the camp for the next twenty four hours, as Sokka keeps to himself with red eyes and gaunt cheeks and Suki falls back on training to empty her mind. Will Katara come back a killer, she wonders as she goes through the motions. Will she come back at all? 

She does, and she’s subdued and ashamed, and still angry but less so, now and she hugs Zuko and seeks out Sokka and apologises again and again for what she said and then she turns to Suki and hugs her too and whispers, “Thank you for taking care of my brother,” and Suki relaxes for the first time in days and smiles at her because she understands loss and grief and the terrible ways it can fester inside someone and make them do unthinkable things.

Then she leaves her boyfriend and his sister to talk some more and tracks down Zuko to finally give him that punch she owes him and shout at him for being stupid and reckless and he hangs his head and muttersapologies right up until she yells, “We care about you, asshole,” in his face and then he blinks at her with his mouth hanging open like that’s the most astonishing thing he’s ever heard, so she hits him again, gently, and then hugs him for good measure.

Ember island is hot and humid and salt-stained, and staying in the Firelords house is a truly surreal experience that Suki does her best not to think too hard about. They all take advantage of the kitchen and the beach, eating meals that don’t require a pot to make and swimming in the lukewarm ocean in the heat of the day. It’s almost like a vacation, and for every moment of contentment, there’s one of gut wrenching guilt as Suki remembers that while she’s lazing in the sun with her friends, the other Kyoshi Warriors are languishing in prison. 

Logically, she knows that there’s nothing she can do, that working with Aang is her best chance to free them, but the yawning cavern in her chest will only be satisfied when she has her girls back with her, safe and sound where she can see them. 

Fire bending practice is something of a spectacle, with the whole gaang gathered in the courtyard to watch as the boys run through katas. There’s a token excuse of boredom or academic interest, but Suki and Katara exchange sly looks and winks that agree that there is nothing wrong with a good ogle. Interestingly enough, Suki frequently catches Sokka’s eyes following Zuko’s movements as well, and she files that little bit of information away to tease him with sometime later. 

Roughly a week into their stay, Zuko knocks on Suki and Sokka’s bedroom door with a mischievous smile, with a wooden box in his hands that clinks promisingly as he walks, and he leads them down the beach to a secluded cove before prying it open to reveal several bottles of sake. 

The rice wine tastes sour and a little dusty and it burns Suki’s throat as she swallows and the three of them all ended up in a haphazard, giggling pile in an embarrassingly short amount of time. Suki is resting on Sokka’s lap with her legs thrown over Zuko’s, Zuko with Sokka’s back leaning heavily against his side, warm and comfortable and content. 

“Y’dad,” Sokka says tipsily, waving his bottle in Zuko’s face, “ _sucks_ , man. What’d he do to make him suck so much? How is that amount of suckitude even possible?” His eyebrows furrow over his blue blue eyes as he contemplates the mysteries of the world. 

There are spots of pink high on his cheekbones that Suki wants very badly to kiss. She stares at them longingly until she realises that Sokka is her boyfriend, and she can kiss him wherever (which is a very dangerous line of thought) she likes, so she does. He gapes at her for a second and then grins, wide and goofy, and kisses her cheek in return. Zuko makes a soft noise and when they turn to look at him he looks sad and a little wistful. Suki pats the unscarred side of his face with sake-clumsy fingers. 

“Don’t be sad,” she tells him. “Why’re you sad?” And he blinks several times with his glassy eyes like he’s thinking hard about it and then he says, 

“Cause my dad sucks. And I miss my mom. And I don’t have ‘nyone to kiss.” And that is sad. It’s so sad, the saddest thing ever and Suki has to blink her own eyes so that they stop being blurry and then she has the best idea of all ideas and says, 

“I’ll kiss you, Zuko!” And flails forward a bit to peck him on the cheek. He stares at her with a confused expression that’s so funny that she starts laughing again and then he shakes himself and sputters, 

“No, no, you ca- can’t do that, you, you get Sokka kisses!” Which is a stupid thing to say because Sokka is right here, so Suki rolls her eyes and nudges her boyfriend who is watching both of them with interest and says, 

“You can have Sokka kisses too, silly!” And Sokka, who is the cleverest person ever nods a bunch of times and says 

“Yeah!” very happily, and leans over to plant a kiss right on Zuko’s other cheek with a loud smack. And then Zuko looks even more gobsmacked which is a whole new level of hilarious and both Suki and Sokka end up on their backs on the sand giggling up at the stars, and Suki thinks,  _I wish this could last forever._

Hangovers are terrible. Hangovers when you accidentally fall asleep on a beach and get woken up by the sun glaring down on you are even worse. Suki wants to pull her brain out of her head and dip it in the ocean to stop it from throbbing, but she can’t figure out how to do it while she’s in this much pain. 

“Owww,” she groans, remarkably coherent, given the circumstances, and two more groans echo hers. She cracks open one eye and instantly regrets it as her headache spikes and she firmly decides to simply stay where she is until the tide comes in and drowns her. 

Naturally, this is when Aang arrives.

“Hey guys! What are you all doing out here? Did you have a party? Why wasn’t I invited?” Somewhere to her left, someone moans pitifully. She’s pretty sure that it’s Sokka. 

“No party,” mutters Zuko. “Only pain.” Suki is very impressed by his ability to form words. 

“...should I get Katara?” Aang asks hesitantly. 

Katara is not impressed with any of them. She scolds and lectures and heals them all in a way bordering on violent and has no sympathy when they flinch, but later on she goes up to Suki with a very young expression on her face and asks quietly, 

“Did you not want me there?” And Suki’s heart hurts because Katara shouldn’t ever look like that because of her, so she pulls her into a hug and reassures her as best she can,

“You were already asleep Katara, and all we did was get drunk, and I think me and Sokka spent most of the evening making out anyway.” And Katara pulls a face and gives her a slightly wobbly smile and then they go off to so some target practice together because holiday or not, there’s still a fight coming and they need all the advantages they can get. 

Aang vanishes. Aang vanishes and the Comet is coming and Suki’s home is about to be wiped off the map and she’s so angry that her teeth ache with how hard she’s clenching them.  _How dare he_ ,  she wants so badly to shout,  _how dare he run off now, when we need him, does he think that this is a game? _And it’s not fair of her, she knows, because he’s a child who has lost everything, who deserves better than to be thrown into the line of fire, but they are all children and they all deserve better and the Fire Nation will kill all of them anyway. 

June is a terrifyingly hot lady and Suki might be a little in love and she thinks that Toph is too. She doesn’t give a shit who they are and she treats them all the same and she leads them to a huge camp filled with old men and part of Suki is thrilled that they have backup for once, and part of her is enraged because  _where have they been all this time_ , while she and her family have been bleeding and fighting and dying on the front lines, but she can’t say that in the face of everyone else’s joy, so she grits her teeth and swallows her words and follows them through the maze of tents. 

Sokka notices, because he always does, and that alone makes things better so she smiles at him and squeezes his hand and focuses on the way Zuko has gone tense and fearful at the sound of his Uncles name. 

Katara gets there before Suki does, and she’s better at reassuring people than Suki will ever be, so she hangs back and pretends not to listen. Hearing all of Zuko’s uncertainties and doubts makes her want to cry, because he has come so far and grown so much, and if Iroh doesn’t forgive him then Grand Lotus or not, Suki will murder him herself. 

Luckily for everyone, morning arrives and Zuko emerges with reddened eyes and a sincere smile, and shoulders looser than Suki has ever seen them. The old man behind him looks much the same, and he rests his hand on Zuko’s shoulder and looks at him with a staggering amount of love that make Suki’s throat go tight with emotion. 

War waits for no family, though, and all too soon breakfast becomes a council meeting, and Iroh plans to take back Ba Sing Se and Sokka is going to try and intercept the Fire Nation Fleet and Zuko is going to be the next Fire Lord. It’s enough to make Suki’s head spin, and none of the others look much better, especially Zuko who has gone pale at the idea of ruling but swallows determinedly and asks Katara to go with him to take down his sister and then he looks across at Suki and Sokka and Toph like he’s trying to memorise their faces. 

Riding on the Eel hounds is not an experience that Suki is eager to repeat, and from the way that Toph clings to her back and swears under her breath, she isn’t the only one. There is a part of Suki that recoils at the idea of letting Toph anywhere near what’s about to happen, but she knows that that’s unfair, that Toph has fought and killed before, that she has just as much right to fight as Suki does. But Suki can’t help but look down at Toph’s tiny hands and childish face and feel her blood run cold at just how  young  she is (but war makes soldiers out of children and corpses out of soldiers and the world is about to end and there is  _no one else _).

Six has been whittled down to five, then down further to three, and then Suki is too slow and falling, falling, falling away from Sokka who screams her name like his heart is being ripped out. But Suki lands and tell them to go without her and then she’s on her own in a way that she had hoped she would never be again. She bit her lip when she landed and the taste of blood on her tongue makes her want to retch, but the others need her and she’s still alive so she climbs into the belly of the war balloon she’s trapped herself on and she fights and fights and fights with everything she has. 

Luckily the impact of collision had caused chaos among the Fire Nation troops, luckily no one expects a teenage girl in Fire Nation red to be attacking anyone, luckily Suki is fuelled by fear and desperation because her friends are out there without her and they might be dying or dead and she can’t help them where she is and that gives her strength. The pilot room is identical to the last one she was in, and she fumbles through the process of turning the balloon around because all she has is second hand knowledge from watching Sokka and blind panic, but she manages, mostly, and then she’s off again, climbing back upwards, onto the roof where she’ll be able to see. 

Seeing, it turns out, is so much worse than fearing, because now she knows what terror and hopelessness look like on Sokka’s face, knows what Toph looks like when she thinks she’s about to die, and Suki never, ever, wants to see it again. 

For once in her life, she has perfect timing, and Sokka has a broken leg but a whole everything else and all three of them are back together and relatively safe and watching Aang as he hurtles through the sky like a meteor. Sokka is leaping up and down and screeching in a combination of excitement and pain and Suki does her best to narrate to Toph because there’s a lot of flying involved in this whole situation and there’s no way for her to see.

The sky turns orange. The sky turns blue. Lord Ozai is reduced to a pitiful heap of a man, and Suki is so relieved that it’s finally over that her knees almost give out. Aang almost gets smothered under a barrage of hugs and then takes Sokka aside to splint his leg while Toph and Suki find the least- damaged war balloon and bully the crew into flying it for them, which is a lot easier now that the Fire Lord has clearly been defeated.

Caldera city is still smoking slightly and Azula is wailing brokenly on the ground and Zuko is leaning heavily on Katara, but they won, they won, they won, and Suki finds herself buried in a tangle of limbs and hair on the steps of the palace and can’t bring herself to care one bit.

“I love you guys,” Aang says, voice thick with tears, and the rest of them chorus it back at him, just as uneven, and they would probably stay there all night if the Fire Sages didn’t appear to usher them inside and formally revoke Ozai’s right to rule. Zuko interrupts the head Sage’s obsequious monologue to call a scribe to write the official declaration of retreat and a royal decree announcing that all war prisoners were to be given humane treatment and then freed. He meets Suki’s eyes as he does it and she squeezes his hand in silent gratitude. Her girls are coming home. 

It takes three days for the caravan containing Suki’s stolen sisters to reach the Caldera, just in time for Zuko’s coronation, and when it rattles through the gates Suki is there, waiting, and she throws herself at each and every one of them as they step out into the courtyard. They shriek when they see her and hug her so tightly it’s painful, and they’re all thin and bruised and tired looking, but they are all alive, every single one of them. 

And, surprisingly, so are Mai and Ty lee, who hang back, one bouncing slightly on her toes with nerves and eagerness and one as still as a statue, and Lian pulls Ty lee forward and says,

“She’s been teaching us to chi block. Can we keep her?” And Suki looks at all of the other girls and none of them seem unhappy with the idea, and Ty lee looks like all of her dreams are hinged on her answer, so she shrugs one shoulder and says, 

“Sure,” And promptly almost gets smothered to death in an enthusiastic hug. 

Ty lee bounds off back towards Mai, who puts an arm around her shoulders and narrows her eyes at Suki insilent warning. Suki meets her gaze steadily and informs her, 

“Zuko should be in his rooms getting ready, if you want to see him.” Because Zuko has been losing sleep for weeks worrying about her, and any small amount of peace that Suki can give him before the chaos of rebuilding a nation falls upon his shoulders, she will.

The coronation is a rousing success. Zuko stands proudly in front of all four nations and Suki watches him with tears in her eyes while Sokka beams uncontrollably next to her. The celebratory feast devolves into drunken revelry in less than an hour, as one hundred years of tension and stress all get released in one evening. Aang eats too much sugar and spends an hour zooming around in the rafters before crashing from his energy high and falling asleep under a table. Katara combines water bending and dancing in a breathtaking display that ends abruptly when Sokka heckles her and gets frozen for his troubles. Mai and Ty lee are discovered kissing in the gardens by a gleeful Toph, and Suki sits back with the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors and simply enjoys the show.

In the morning, life will continue on. The war is over, but the cleanup is just beginning, and Suki knows that it’s going to be a long time before anything settles down. Aang and Katara are going to head out to begin reforging connections between nations, but they’ll visit as often as they can. Toph is going to go back to Gaoling to give her parents one last chance to treat her the way they always should have, but with their blessing or without it, she’s promised to come back.

Sokka and Suki are staying in the Fire Nation for the foreseeable future, while the Kyoshi Warriors recuperate in the luxury of the palace and act as bodyguards for a while, to defend Zuko from assassins and politicians and other general annoyances. Suki had been worried that they all would want to sail back to Kyoshi right away, after so long away from home, but when she asks they all laugh at her and Lian looks at her like she can’t believe how dumb she is and says, "Home is wherever we all are together, stupid.” And Suki has to hug them all again. Not to mention, Mai and Ty lee apparently dished on all the baby-Zuko stories while they were in prison, and so now Zuko has a dozen new adoptive sisters very eager to look out for him that he hasn’t been told about yet. Suki is very much looking forward to that conversation. 

Seventeen, Suki thinks, is a good age to find peace. To stay put for a while and figure out who she is when she isn’t fighting. To wear clothes that aren’t armour and drink tea to help her relax and visit a city to see her friends. It’s a good age to realise that she has her whole life in front of her, and she doesn’t know where it’s going, and that’s okay. She can figure it out as she goes. 

_No matter what,_ she thinks, as she looks around Iroh’s tea shop in Ba Sing Se, at Sokka hunched defensively over his terrible drawing, at Zuko and Toph and Mai all ribbing him good-naturedly, at Iroh and Ty lee discussing auras, or something else odd and spiritual, at Aang and Katara shyly holding hands and blushing. _No matter what, I will always have this._

**Author's Note:**

> My brain at 10pm: psst write a fic about Suki from atla  
> Me: what? No. I’m halfway through two chapters from my wip I can’t get sidetrac-  
> My brain: SUKI SUKI SUKI SUKI
> 
> *yeets this into the void and runs away


End file.
